Darkmoon

3-16-17

This hacker could be spying on you in your bedroom

with mini-cameras and microphones concealed in your vibrator

Experts have warned that hackers can exploit security vulnerabilities in devices connected to the internet. Hacking a vibrator is now relatively easy. Which is not good news if you happen to be a woman who relies on these sex toys for fulfillment.

One of the great advantages of not using vibrators or dildos is this: you can rest secure in the knowledge that no sexual pervert with hacking skills is watching your every move on a remote computer. Which he can certainly do nowadays, given that the hacking technology is now available to allow someone to spy on your most intimate moments in the bedroom.

I almost fell out of chair when I read this in The Daily Mail a few days ago:

And while that seems scary enough, the latest technological threat to our privacy is a lot more intimate.

A sex toy company was ordered to pay customers up to £6,120 ($7,550) each, after it used its remote-controlled gadgets to gather information about users’ habits in the bedroom.

The £115 ($145) We-Vibe 4 Plus, available from retailers including Ann Summers and Amazon, surreptitiously collected details including when and where owners used the device.

It also tracked minute-by-minute temperature changes, the settings users chose, and their email addresses.

[All this] information was being sent back to Standard Innovation, the sex toy’s Canadian manufacturer, without permission. The firm will pay a settlement of £2.4million ($3 million), including £6,120 ($7,550) to everyone who bought a We-Vibe 4 Plus and downloaded the app before September 26 last year. (See here)

I had no idea Canadian corporations had such a marked propensity for sexual voyeurism, implanting hidden cameras and microphones in their sex toys and then selling them to millions of sexually active women all over the world — without even a word of warning in the accompanying package.

They could have said something nice and user-friendly in their brochure. Like this, for example:

“Rest assured we are a highly respectable and socially responsible sex toy company whose raison d’être is to provide multiple orgasms to discerning customers through electronic means. We are nevertheless recording all your intimate moments for research purposes, such as your pulse rate, perspiration activity, temperature changes, and cardiovascular details, in order to enhance the value of our product for future generations of sex toy consumers.

If by chance you should suddenly find intimate pictures of yourself on internet porn sites without your prior permission, engaging in autoerotic activity in the privacy of your home, please don’t get alarmed. If furthermore you should become subject to blackmail demands from hackers, relax and try to make use of the full range of stress reduction techniques now available to the public. Do not on any account contact the police or complain about us. That’s not going to get you anywhere and it will only upset a lot of people, yourself included. Just try to ignore all the hassle and get on with your life, OK?

A court in the US has ordered the firm behind the We-Vibe smart dildo to payout $3 million (£2.4 million), after the device was found to be tracking intimate details of use by customers. Some sex toys, like the Lovense Max link up to an app which allows remote control.

Two anonymous females from Illinois, outraged at being spied upon during their most private moments, have taken successful legal action against the Canadian company that did the spying. The company, Standard Innovation, was forced to delete the erotic data it had collected. “Unbeknownst to its customers,” the complaint to the police read, “Standard Innovation designed We-Connect to collect and record highly intimate and sensitive data regarding customers’ personal We-Vibe use… to its servers in Canada.” Standard Innovation, which sells two different brands of orgasm generators, We-Vibe and Laid, said it took customer privacy “very seriously.”

‘”We have enhanced our privacy notice and increased app security,” it said in its defense, “and we continue to work with leading privacy and security experts to enhance the app.”

The privacy issue was uncovered at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas last year. Not only was the We-Vibe found to be relaying information back to Standard Innovation, but hackers could also break into the device remotely and activate it without the user’s permission.

One of the hackers, who goes by the pseudonym ‘Follower’, said: “The company that makes this vibrator … have over two million people using their devices. If you come back to the fact that we’re talking about people, unwanted activation of a vibrator is potentially sexual assault.”

The news follows earlier revelations about internet-enabled TVs apparently spying on their owners. Samsung came under fire over its voice-activated smart TVs, after its small print revealed they could record conversations and potentially send them to a third party.

Earlier this month, documents published by Wikileaks suggested the CIA was able to hack into smart TVs and turn them into listening posts.

In passing, we may mention the relatively new phrase “internet of things”. This refers to any number of household gadgets and devices in everyday use which are connected to the internet. Products range from smart cars and smart TVs to fridges, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, toasters, wall clocks, thermostats, baby monitors, printers.

Hackers and spooks can now watch you in your own living room

and overhear every private conversation you are having!

“Research firm Gartner predicts there will be 8.4 billion connected “things” in use in 2017, up 31 per cent from 2016. By 2020 this number could reach 20.4 billion, with smart TVs and digital set-top boxes the most popular consumer gadgets. While they are convenient, such gadgets can present an easy targets for hackers.”

In the documents that Wikileaks has just released there is even discussion about the CIA potentially being able to infect a vehicle control system. Presumably the goal would be to remotely take control of a vehicle and either spy on the occupants or kill them by driving into an obstacle at very high speed.

This is how they do it:

IF THEY CAN HACK YOUR STEERING SYSTEM AND YOUR BRAKES,

WHAT’S TO STOP THEM MAKING YOU HAVE AN ACCIDENT?

But we were talking about hacking vibrators, and so we must return now to the distasteful subject of sexual deviancy. I apologize in advance for any offense that might be given in the next section.

— § —

The last thing I want is to lecture people on masturbation and come across as a Mrs Grundy character, wagging a stern finger at those who indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. People are free to do as they please within the law. But does it follow from this that we should be forced to give our approval and endorsement to various forms of sexual depravity that the state has decided to make legal? Aren’t we free to wrinkle our noses and say, “Yuck!”

Don’t you want to vomit, for example, when you read on the internet about state-sanctioned “bestiality brothels” where dogs, pigs, sheep, and other domestic animals are available for sexual purposes, as I believe they are in Germany and Scandinavia?

As this is a family site where our comment moderator is a former nun — Sister Monica — these are matters on which I would prefer to remain silent. There are some areas of darkness I would prefer to avoid. Yet perhaps I can be forgiven for asking: Are there any limits to the sexual depravity that has descended upon our Western societies like a black cloud from Gehenna? How much lower do we need to sink into the cesspits of sexuality?

As I was putting the finishing touches to this article, I was shocked to open a newspaper and read about a sex doll brothel in Barcelona, the first of its kind in Europe. This is of course marginally better than bestiality brothels. But not much. I felt a bit sad. I said to myself: “Hey mister, what’s wrong with real women? Do you really have to be so grotty and pathetic that you need to make love to a lump of plastic?”

Okay, so here is this brothel in Spain. A guy rents an apartment in Barcelona and advertises the charms of his four polymer princesses: ravishingly beautiful life-size dolls made of thermoplastic elastomer, a polymer renowned for its fleshlike softness. No human woman can possibly achieve such breathless perfection as these four “Lumidolls”, as they are called: busty Katy from Europe, angelic Lily from Asia, sultry Aki from Japan, and torrid Leiza from Africa. Appointments with these inanimate objects posing as women are available at the going rate of roughly $113 per hour.

“After choosing their plastic partners, clients meet them in a candle-lit room.

Clients can listen to music or watch erotic films on a large plasma television while they have alone time with the doll, RT News reports.

The sex dolls are unique, constructed of a thermoplastic elastomer with three orifices and flexible limbs for your pleasure. The brothel’s website strongly states that each doll is “thoroughly disinfected” after each use.

Sex doll brothels are not a new phenomenon. They are popular in China and Japan. I understand a sex doll can be ordered from ‘Room Service’ in certain hotels. She’s on the menu, so to speak. A porter brings her up to the room, wheeling her in on a trolley. A chambermaid unpacks her from her cardboard box, assembles her limbs, sticks on her head, arranges her wig and props her up in bed.

I’m not making this up. I was given a first-hand account of these practices by a Japanese student who had once worked in an Osaka hotel as a chambermaid. These “love hotels”, I was to learn, are known as rahuho, and the dolls can be rented by the hour. Regular customers are even allowed to take the elevator down to the hotel basement and check out the dolls in person, selecting their “sleeping partner” according to their fancy. (Here’s a picture of the dolls in their storage bunks)

But to get back to the sex doll brothel in Barcelona.

This is the first sex doll establishment in Europe. It’s never been done before in this part of the world, but this is what happens when multiculturalism becomes the norm. First you get sushi, then you get sex dolls.

Though the dolls in the Barcelona brothel are thoroughly disinfected after use, clients are discreetly advised to use a condom — just to be on the safe side, you understand.

Any takers? Maybe I shouldn’t ask. Because I don’t really want to hear the answer.

The latest news on the sex doll brothel in Barcelona is that it has encountered a temporary setback. This is what I read in the Independent (‘I’) newspaper, 16 March, 2015, p.3:

A brothel manned exclusively by sex dolls has been forced to move after just two weeks. The establishment in Barcelona, which charges 80 euros (£70 or $86) for 30 minutes with life-size dolls Katy, Lily, Aky or Niky, is looking for new premises after its landlord realized what was taking place in his flat and cancelled the rental contract.”

THREE OF THE SEX DOLLS ON OFFER:

Leiza (African), Katy (European) and Aki (Japanese)

— § —

Now why, you might well ask, did I have to mention this sleazy sex doll brothel in Spain? And why did I rake up the even more distasteful subject of bestiality brothels in Germany and Scandinavia? This has nothing to do, you will say, with the hacking of vibrators. It is a totally unrelated topic.

Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong! All these subjects are very closely related. They all have one thing in common.

Hidden cameras and microphones!

Whoever enters those sleazy brothels, or makes use of those smart vibrators, will come under intense surveillance of some kind and become the perfect blackmail victim.

This is what it’s all about: getting the goods on you. Honeytrapping you. Making you hopelessly vulnerable to blackmail demands.

Once you’re their slave, you will be at their mercy. Having to do exactly what they want. And the higher you are up in the food chain, the more valuable you will be to them.

Just make sure you are not the President or Prime Minister of some great country.